


What's Past Is Prologue

by Vitreous_Humor



Category: Good Omens (TV), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Ancient Egypt, Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Bad Book Etiquette, Crossover, Eden - Freeform, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic, M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21876415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitreous_Humor/pseuds/Vitreous_Humor
Summary: In the grand scheme of things, even Aziraphale and Crowley are small and bounded. Measured against forever, they're just as brief as humans, and though they are not endless, sometimes, they do run into them.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 42





	1. A Snippet of Destiny

_A Garden, Just Before the Beginning_

Aziraphale hurried along the twisting garden path, desperately trying to recognize any of the markers that had been presented at the orientation earlier. He took a left, another left, a right, and then a left, and he paused to look around fretfully.

_Oh, this doesn't even look like the same Garden any longer..._

Somehow, despite how frazzled he was, he knew that it was still a Garden, something deserving of capital letters and respect, even if, as he was beginning to suspect, it was not _the_ Garden, that is, the one where he was meant to be taking his place upon the eastern wall.

_Gabriel will give me such a scolding if I'm not in place for the ribbon cutting. I shall delay everyone if I'm not where I need to be when God unveils Adam for the first time, and I do so want to see..._

Another left and a right. A short jaunt over a footbridge that crossed a crackling brook of fire. Left, left, right. A squeeze between two rather rude topiaries. Really. Some people.

He should have noticed sooner that there was no sun in this place. Vaniel and their team had been so proud of the sun, how warm it was and how it roared softly in the vacuum of space. At some point, he had lost track of the sun entirely. This place, wherever it was, was lit with a sullen glow, and coming up over the horizon was a something red and enormous and dim. If the new sun Vaniel had made roared, this one grumbled, and it made him uncomfortable.

Right, right. Through a drippy culvert tunnel. Across a field of spinning mirrors where his reflection didn't seem quite as faithful as he thought it was meant to be.

He was feeling rather overwrought when he finally caught sight of another figure. It was someone in a hooded robe, seated on a bench by a slow-moving river. Aziraphale started to open his mouth to offer the man a greeting, but then he blinked at the thing in the man's hands.

“Oh, that's a _book,”_ he said in surprise. “I've heard about those...we're not meant to have those for a while yet, are we?”

The man did not turn to him, but perhaps there was a smile in his voice when he spoke.

“Not for some little bit of time, no. But you will not have any books like this. This one is unique.”

“Goodness,” Aziraphale said, impressed. He stood a little straighter to see if he could read what the hooded man was reading, but the angle was all wrong, and honestly, he should be trying to get to the opening ceremonies in Eden anyway. He opened his mouth to ask for directions, but he was startled by what came out instead.

“May I... that is, may I see?”

The hooded man was silent, and Aziraphale blushed. Honestly, what a silly thing to ask. Of course the answer would be _no,_ what use did a guardian have for books anyway? He was meant to watch over the garden and the people who lived in side it. Not much use for books on his eternal stretch of wall.

“Ah,” said the hooded man. “You ask to look at my book, and then I say yes. Come here, Aziraphale.”

It didn't bother Aziraphale that the man knew his name. He was Aziraphale, the only Aziraphale, as plain and convincing and recognizable as _quasar_ or _magpie_ or _blue._ He set his sword down on the soft grass and came to sit on the bench next to the hooded man.

He could see that the book had been opened to the first few pages, and the beauty of words on fine vellum dizzied him. He was a celestial thing, made of magic if there was any such thing in the universe, but this was magic of another kind, heart to mind to hand to pen to ink to paper to eye to mind to heart, and he could not catch his breath.

_Oh... oh goodness, yes._

Without thinking of what he was doing, he reached for the pages, flipping through them rapidly as the hooded figure flinched in surprise.

“What are you-”

**‘ _I said, that one went down like a lead balloon,’ said the serpent._**

**‘ _Oh. Yes,’ said the angel, whose name was Aziraphale._**

**‘ _I think it was a bit of an overreaction, to be honest,’ said the serpent._**

Flip, flip.

**_And the angel and the demon stood at the foot of the hill all day and all night. Sometimes they were joined by others, and sometimes they were alone. Somewhere near dawn, when it was almost over, one of them reached for the hand of the other, and the other did not pull away._ **

“Wait, I'm not...”

Flip, flip, flip.

**_Crowley looked around at the mist, the bog, the swagged clouds that promised something that would come to be known as the blight of 'wintry mix.'_ **

**_"So we are both working very hard in damp places and just canceling each other out.”_ **

Flip, flip, flip.

**_The angel's heart did not break, but it did crack, enough to let in light, enough to let out love._ **

**“ _You go too fast for me, Crowley,” he said._**

“Er...”

Flip.

**“ _Come up with something or… or I’ll never talk to you again!”_**

**_And then Crowley did._ **

Flip, flip, flip, a whole chunk of pages, flip, flip, flip, flip...

**“ _Oh, it's so good to see the both of you again! It's been a while, hasn't it?”_**

Aziraphale squeaked as the hooded figure closed the book firmly, missing his fingers by just a hair.

“That is enough of that.”

Aziraphale was shocked by his urge to reach for the closed book again, to see if perhaps he could just catch a few more words. The story looked fascinating, looked like exactly the sort of thing he would read and then start over again the moment he was done. It looked like something he would take to bed with him and allow to get all tattered beneath the pillows, which was silly because this was well before beds and pillows and tattering.

“I'm sorry...”

The hooded man ignored him, opening the book close to the beginning, and this time holding it well out of Aziraphale's grasp. Aziraphale noticed with a bit of shock that a heavy iron chain stretched between the book's spine and a shackle around the man's wrist.

The man read a few more lines, and then nodded with a bit of relief.

“All right. You read a little bit of the beginning, and then I send you on to Eden.”

The man gestured towards a pair of tall poplars, their crowns crossed to make a portal between them.

“Through there. If you hurry, you won't be late at all.”

“Oh! Thank you so much. I'm dreadfully sorry if I... that is. I should be going. Thank you for letting me look...”

Aziraphale had taken a few steps towards the poplar gate when the hooded man spoke again.

“I remind you to pick up your sword.”

Aziraphale blushed bright red, and scampered back to take up his sword. The man had said he wouldn't be late if he hurried, but he paused.

“Do you think... that is, will I ever get to read your book again?”

The hooded man read a few more lines, and then Aziraphale got the impression that he smiled.

“One day, Aziraphale. But for now, there's someone waiting for you. You should go.”

“Oh! Quite right. Thank you again!”

He hurried between the poplars, stepping out to a bright blue sky and a sun that roared in the pleasure and strength of its youth.

Aziraphale opened his wings, leaping up to catch a stray south wind. The garden underneath him was vast, but he covered its length in under a minute, joining the other angels wheeling down to take their places for the ceremony. In the light of the new sun and the excitement of the first days of Eden, his memory of the other garden faded away, and on one level, he forgot it entirely. On another, he never did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Neil Gaiman taught me how to write. Angela Carter, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette, and Seanan McGuire, too, but I suspect Gaiman was a case of right place, right time, elastic brain meats.
> 
> *If you've not read the Sandman series yet, you ought to!
> 
> *Please do not grab at Destiny's book. I cannot think that he likes it. That said, I dunno what I would have done in Aziraphale's place.
> 
> *If you've ever wondered what pure id-fic looks like for me, it's probably this. Or maybe it has more kinky sex. But probably this.


	2. A Dreaming Night

_City of Amon, 403 BCE_

Crawley came awake to the soft sound of of a footstep in the hall. His eyes did not open, because snakes didn't have eyelids, but he did lift his head up from the dusty floor under the bed, pouring out into the small bedroom like a oil from a broken jar.

He didn't look at the small figure sleeping in the bed behind him. They were asleep, because if they weren't, there wouldn't be a heavy step in the hallway, that certain density to the air.

The footsteps paused, and Crawley arched himself back and up until he would sit eye to eye with a six-foot-tall man, the rest of his thick length coiled on the floor. Times like this, he wished he had a proper hood to flare like his local cousins, but you couldn't have everything, He wove from side to side in anticipation, his mouth open and ready to bite.

The door opened, Crawley lunged, and then he had to perform that truly unfortunate maneuver where a snake strikes and then immediately decides _nope, nope, bad idea, regroup and reconsider!_ It felt a little like turning himself inside out, and he stared at the figure in the doorway with some dismay.

“Well aren't _you_ a big one?” he found himself saying.

The figure in the door looked like a tall thin man, his skin soft brown and his black hair braided and perfumed with jasmine oil. The robe he wore was a deep black, and the hems were cleverly dyed with orange to suggest the flicker of flames.

That's what he looked like, but Crawley, with eyes better than average, caught a glimpse of immense age, fathomless black skies and a place from where one could stand and see all the rest of creation. The world _endless_ came to his mind, and Crawley who had after all once designed stars, had a somewhat accurate idea of what that really meant.

“Fuck,” he said, and the man crossed his arms over his chest.

“My chronicler came to me tonight,” the man said. “He told me that four of my emissaries had gone missing, and the fifth returned pumped full of poison.”

“Yeah, it was leaking the stuff by the time it gave up and limped away,” Crawley said without apology. “Would have bit its head off next if it hadn't.”

“So it was you, then, preventing my people from doing their work.”

Now Crawley reared back again, tongue flickering out furiously. He lifted himself until he towered over the thin man, who after all, wasn't _that_ big, was he?

(He was, but Crawley hadn't gotten so far or fallen so low without ignoring certain key facts like relative size, power and the ability of another being to punt him off a cloud).

“If their _work_ is picking on something that small that's already had a bit of Hell on Earth-”

“Enough.”

Crawley yelped as he found himself popped back into his human form. He stumbled a bit, but squared up again.

“You're a fucker,” he said balefully, “and me and the kid made a deal.”

“Perhaps. Demon Crawley, you said the child behind you had had a bit of Hell on Earth. What do you think they are going to have after you take your payment for your services these last few weeks?”

“Not really my department, is it?”

The man regarded him gravely, taking in Crawley's last few weeks as easily as he might take in Crawley's yellow eyes and red hair.

“When the child summoned you with tears and blood on the river bank-”

“They were crying loudly enough that I woke up from my nap, yeah.”

“You made a bargain with them. Their soul for their freedom from terror.”

“Yup. Just cost me a bit of murder, a bit of arson, and now I'm doing the clean-up. Which, by the way, if you knew about all this and you still sent your little one-trick dicks, I repeat. You're a fucker.”

“I wonder, demon, if you know that by the laws of your god, a child this young does not have the ability or the right to sell their own soul. They can no more sell it than they can sell the river or the pharaoh's palace.”

“No, I don't know anything about that,” Crawley said. “And don't you go telling me.”

The man regarded him carefully.

“You cannot protect every small and helpless thing,” he said at last. “You cannot stand at every bedside, eat every nightmare.”

“Of course not. I'm a demon. We don't protect. We connive,steal, trick, and manipulate. We...keep an eye on our investments, and we make deals, and maybe sometimes we don't make them as sound as we ought. Sloppy lot, we are. So it goes, right?”

Crawley realized that at some point, his wings had rustled out, and he hitched them a little higher, a little wider. It wasn't given to him to be a protector of any sort any more, but he decided that if asked, he was going to call this a matter of pride and jurisdiction. Hell liked words like that, always had.

The man considered him for a moment. It occurred to Crawley that he had never even looked at the child sleeping behind him. He hated him just a little for that.

In the end, hate or not, contempt or not, the man shrugged, stepping back.

“As you please. It is not for me to interfere in the selling of souls or Hell's representatives on Earth.”

Crawley self-consciously drew his wings in, and the man turned to go.

Something in Crawley, some instinct for self-preservation that he didn't listen to that often, prevented him from grasping the sleeve of the man's robe.

“Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Look... It's not my job to get rid of nightmares... but couldn't it be yours? Couldn't we just... _not?”_

There were stars in the man's eyes, not like the great balls of gas and dust that he had once spun and kindled with such care, but something more like the dreams of stars, silver and gleaming.

“I am as I am. Things happen as they must, and we all have our parts to play.”

Crawley stood back, unaccountably hurt by the man's words.

“Yeah, I guess that's the way it is. We're all what we are and there's no changing that, is there?”

“You and I are not the same,” the man said. “I am Endless, and I do not change. It is given to your kind to change, to twist the story that you were given and to tell something new, if that is what you wish to do.”

“Yeah?” asked Crawley. “The last time I thought that, it didn't end so well.”

“No. But it isn't over for you yet, is it?”

Crawley supposed not, but as the man turned, he couldn't resist calling to him again.

“Hey.”

“You will not like what happens if you deter me a third time.”

Crawley grinned.

“This is only number two, right? So. So you're not in the business of ending nightmares. But. There was... that is. When I sleep. There's. Um..”

He floundered, and then gave in.

“Please?”

For a long moment, Crawley thought he was just going to get blasted on the spot, or maybe covered in wriggling bugs for the rest of his long life or turned to a pile of sarcastic charcoal. Instead, the man nodded.

“It is not given to me to end all nightmares. But sometimes, I will perhaps call one home. Good night, Crawley.”

The man was gone as if he had never been, and Crawley hit the ground, shaking hard. There was a part of him- essentially the entire part that was a great and burning torch spun so fast it was really an arc of terrible light- that knew he had come very close to something far greater than he was, far larger and far more vicious. The man-shaped part of him couldn't help thinking _What a pompous prick!_

At some point, the child in the bed behind him stirred, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

“Did it-?”

Crawley snorted.

“What kind of amateur demon d'you think you're dealing with? I bit its head off and rolled it into the river. Crocodiles will get the rest. Efficient lot, crocodiles.”

The child nodded gravely.

“Thank you.”

Crawley rose, dusting himself off officiously.

“Don't _thank you_ me, brat. Just remember our bargain, yeah? When I come looking for that soul, I better find it pristine and pretty. No doing evil things and absolutely no more demon summoning, right?”

He got the child's promise again, and as the sun inched over the horizon, he heaved himself out the window and started the long walk back to his rented rooms.

He certainly wasn't an industrious member of the working class, and so he felt not in the least guilty for lying down for a nap after a long night. He closed his eyes, half ready in spite of everything for that old sensation of tumbling through the air, the smell of burning feathers and the searing heat of a fall that never ended.

Instead, he was flying and all the world unrolled beneath him. He saw the rivers change courses, saw the cities rise and fall, and all over, there were people, the human ones and the ones that weren't, and they fought and loved and built, and it was so perfect that he couldn't look away, could never look away or abandon them.

In his dream, Crawley found the perfect place, the best one, the most fascinating and the most exciting, (how he decided on this, he could never remember when he awoke, but it didn't matter) and with a grin, he spiraled down to join in all the fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I read Sandman just before I started high school, and I was really into Dream. Then I read it about a decade later and yeah, these days, I'm with Crowley: _what a pompous prick!_.
> 
> -The idea of Dream taking away one of Crowley's nightmares has been hanging in my head for ages; finally found a place for it here.
> 
> -I think Crowley likes his loopholes, and I have a feeling he has used all kinds of rules-lawyer tricks for getting his way. Basically, his motto is "I'll do what I want and make the paperwork say it was right." Handy skillset, if you've got it.


End file.
